As of this morning 97 percent of Huntsville Utilities customers, including business parks, had power.

"With the exception of approximately 8,000 still without power due to storm damage, all Huntsville Utilities customers have power (this) morning," Huntsville Utilities said in a 6 a.m. news release. "Crews will focus on finishing up storm repairs today."

Huntsville Utilities President Bill Pippin asked for patience because it could take a few days to get all 8,000 customers back online.

"We will get people on one, two, 15 at a time," he said. "It will take a couple of days."

Pippin said all of Huntsville's business parks now have power, but those businesses that have been operating on generator power need to coordinate with Huntsville Utilities to safely reconnect to the grid.

The water system is fully operational, Pippin said, so there's no need to conserve water. However, Pippin continued to ask customers to conserve energy because the system is operating on two main TVA transmission lines and those connections are fragile.

"If anything happens to those lines, we could lose half the grid all at once," Pippin said.

Huntsville Utilities said the work of reconnecting customers who have problems at the street or neighborhood level, whether fallen trees or lightning-damaged equipment, is likely to take time to get resolved. Customers without power are urged to call 256-535-4448, if they haven't notified the utility, to make sure a work order is placed.